Gabriel Yad-Elohim photographed at the time of his trial in 2018. Photo / Greg Bowker
Gabriel Yad-Elohim photographed at the time of his trial in 2018. Photo / Greg Bowker
A mental health patient who brutally beat an Auckland man to death just days after being released from care has failed to get his murder conviction overturned.
In 2018, Gabriel Hikari Yad-Elohim was found guilty by a High Court jury of murdering Michael David Mulholland.
He is now serving a life sentence in prison, with a non-parole period of 13 years.
Yad-Elohim, who had pleaded not guilty to the murder on the grounds of insanity, took his case to the Court of Appeal claiming a miscarriage of justice had occurred.
Michael Mulholland's body was found in a stairwell in a block of flats in Western Springs. Photo / Dean Purcell
His main ground of appeal was that there was no “real contest” before the jury between the Crown and defence psychiatrists about whether he was fit to stand trial.
The appeal said relevant evidence had come to light too late, and a defence psychiatrist was under time pressure to prepare a report in his favour.
Yad-Elohim’s appeal lawyer, Ron Mansfield, KC, said there would have been a “real prospect” of a different verdict had the defence psychiatrist been given more time.
Mulholland’s body was found in the stairwell at the Western Springs flats where the 69-year-old lived on September 26, 2017.
There was never any doubt that Yad-Elohim had killed him – the whole vicious, nearly six-minute beating in the stairwell was captured on CCTV and was shown to the jury at the trial.
The key issue was whether Yad-Elohim was criminally insane at the time he dragged Mulholland from the door of his flat and attacked him.
It was estimated that Yad-Elohim inflicted 90 blows on his victim, who died from blunt force trauma to his face, head and abdomen.
Gabriel Yad-Elohim pleaded insanity over the killing of Michael Mulholland but the Court of Appeal said there was no miscarriage of justice. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Yad-Elohim, who was born in South Korea but told police he was Japanese, had never met Mulholland before.
He had gone to the apartment building with a female sex worker he had met to buy some methamphetamine, the trial was told.
The woman fled from the scene with Yad-Elohim’s $200 just before the attack.
Much of the trial defence focused on Yad-Elohim’s time as a patient at the then Auckland District Health Board’s acute mental health unit, Te Whetu Tawera, from which he was released just before the murder.
The Court of Appeal judges said there was no miscarriage of justice in the finding of the trial judge that Yad-Elohim was fit to stand trial.
They said they were also satisfied there was no miscarriage of justice because the judge did not detail the options available, including detention in a secure psychiatric facility if the jury had found Yad-Elohim not guilty by reason of insanity.
They also said there was no miscarriage of justice as a result of the additional information that became available at or just before trial, and the limited time available for the defence psychiatrist to prepare to give evidence.
“There is no reason to think that additional time would have enabled materially different evidence to be given at trial, or might have led to a different verdict,” the appeal judges said.
